£
.D.
- 14 -
דני
to travel botiroon Canton and Hong Kong, which at onc time cost $20 each. Tho samo toll was charged for permits to onter Shamcon ( ); and any Chinese attempting to travol without these permits Horo liable to arrost, fine, imprisonment and torture by the strike-pickets tho often fired at and somotinos killed them. The strike-pickets also ostablished shods for the examination of cargo and collected "squcozo" theroon. They hold steamers to ranson. They soizod junks. They kidnapped indivi- dual Chinese and oxtorted money from then. In fact they beloved precisely as do the bias Buy pirates or the inland brigands. They were armed: ith rifles and revolvers; and they bocano at Canton an imperium
in imperio, which the Canton Govorment did not
control and to which the Canton Treasury made a
daily dole of some 66,000. They were hated by the
peace-loving Cantoneso, hom they terrorized: and
they were feared by the Canton Government itself.
It is perfectly certain that but for the nofarious
activities of those strike pickets the anti-British
boycott in Kuang-tung would have disappoorod clmost, if not quito, as rapidly as did the general strike in Hong Kong. Behind the boycott was Bolshevik intrigue and the sinister figure of Comrade Borodin, whose special mission is, it souna, to promote discord betoon Canton and Hong Kong and to injurc
to the best of his ability British trade and prostige
405
!.
1